Humanity As Selfish In Virgil's Aeneid

How Virgil Portrays Humanity As Selfish Through His Writing
In Virgil’s Aeneid Book IV: The Passion of the Queen, an outraged Dido bellows,“I hope and pray that on some grinding reef/ Midway at sea you'll drink your punishment/ And call and call on Dido’s name!/From far away I shall come after you/ With my black fires, and when cold death has parted/ Body from soul I shall be everywhere/ A shade to haunt you! You will pay for this,/ Unconscionable!”(Virgil 506-511). This is the response of Dido, Queen of Carthage, after being informed of her lover, Aeneas, and his intentions to surreptitiously leave her and create his own city in Italy. Not only has Dido been betrayed, but she has been left with nothing; nothing to remember him from, nothing
Being the Queen of Carthage is not supposed to be an easy way for Dido to have whatever she desires, but in Book IV of the Aeneid, Virgil shows Dido doing just that. Before when Dido was trying to gain approval from the gods to marry Aeneas, she had taken livestock as offerings for approval. In the book it states, “Visiting the shrines/ They begged for grace at every altar first,/ then put choice rams and ewes to ritual death…”(Virgil 74-76). While sacrificing livestock is generally how approval was gained from the gods during this time, Dido’s source for livestock was not normal. Considering that Dido is not a farmer, she had to be using the livestock of the people in her kingdom for her own personal affairs with the gods. This is a selfish act that causes her reputation with her people to crumble as the story progresses. Aside from taking from her kingdom, Dido also puts a full-on halt in the progression of her kingdom as well. While Dido is preoccupied in thougth about Aeneas, it states, “Towers, half-built, rose/ No farther; men no longer trained in arms/ Or toiled to make harbors and battlements/ Impregnable. Projects were broken off/ laid over, and the menacing huge walls/ With cranes unmoving- stood against the sky”(Virgil 115-120). Because of her undying affection for Aeneas, Dido chooses to place
Bernard Mandeville, a majorly popular Anglo-Dutch philosopher, also believed quite strongly that all humans are made selfish or self-centered. On Philosophy.lander.edu, a textbook site based around the ideas of philosophers like Bernard, it states, “Man is extraordinarily selfish, cunning, and stubborn, but capable of being socialized if he believes he can profit by it”(Mandeville 1). What Mandeville is saying is that we are all selfish as humans to large proportions, but we are willing o behave otherwise if there is something to gain from it. When Anna convinces Dido to try and gain the love of Aeneas, she specifically uses the benefits Aeneas may have towards the kingdom as her main reason for Dido to keep him. This shows how Mandeville’s beliefs overlap with what Virgil is trying to show the readers. Mandeville does not just show humans as being selfish, but rather that all living things are selfish as well. He states, “Animals seek their own pleasure and do not think about the consequences to others. Those species who do live together have the fewest appetites to gratify”(Mandeville 1). What Mandeville is saying in that quote is that all living creatures are selfish and that those who live together have the fewest needs to satisfy. After she finally manages to have Aeneas living